War of 1812 (1812-1815)

Origins (American expansionism)

American expansion into the Northwest Territory had been obstructed by various Native American peoples since the end of the Revolution, with supplies and encouragement from the British. Americans on the western frontier demanded that the British cease the practice. In June 1812, United States Secretary of State James Monroe said "[i]t might be necessary to invade Canada, not as an object of the war but as a means to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion". Speaker Henry Clay repeated the same argument. Canada was the only British possession that the Americans could easily attack and capturing it could force Britain to back down on maritime issues. As historian J. C. A. Stagg observed, it would also cut off food supplies for Britain's West Indian colonies and temporarily prevent the British from continuing to arm their indigenous allies. However, some historians believe that a desire to annex Canada was a cause of the war. Congressman Richard Mentor Johnson told the United States Congress that the constant Indian ambushes along the Wabash River in Indiana were enabled by supplies from Canada and were proof that "the war has already commenced". He said that "I shall never die contented until I see England's expulsion from North America and her territories incorporated into the United States". Madison believed that British economic policies were harming the American economy because they were designed to bolster British trade. He also believed that Canada was a conduit for American smugglers undercutting his own trade policies which could require the United States to annex British North America. Furthermore, Madison believed that the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence trade route might become the main trade route for the export of American goods to Europe. If the United States controlled the resources of British North America such as timber which the British needed for their navy, then Britain would be forced to change the maritime policies which had so offended American public opinion. Congressman John Adams Harper said in a speech that "the Author of Nature Himself had marked our limits in the south, by the Gulf of Mexico and on the north, by the regions of eternal frost".

Origins (trade w/ France, trade w/ Britain, impressment, naval actions)

In 1807, Britain introduced a series of trade restrictions via the Orders in Council to impede neutral trade with France which Britain was fighting in the Napoleonic Wars. The United States contested these restrictions as illegal under international law. Historian Reginald Horsman states that "a large section of influential British opinion [...] thought that the United States presented a threat to British maritime supremacy". The United States Merchant Marine nearly doubled between 1802 and 1810. During the Napoleonic Wars, it became the world's largest neutral fleet. Britain was the largest United States trading partner, receiving 80 percent of American cotton and 50 percent of other American exports. The British public and press resented the growing mercantile and commercial competition. The United States' view was that Britain's restrictions violated its right to trade with others. During the Napoleonic Wars, the British Royal Navy expanded to 176 ships of the line and 600 ships overall, requiring 140,000 sailors to man them. The Royal Navy could man its ships with volunteers in peacetime, but it competed in wartime with merchant shipping and privateers for a small pool of experienced sailors, so it turned to impressment from its shores and from foreign and domestic shipping when it needed manpower. The United States believed that British deserters had a right to become American citizens, but Britain did not recognize a right for a British subject to relinquish his citizenship and become a citizen of another country. The British Navy considered any American citizen subject to impressment if he was born British. American reluctance to issue formal naturalization papers and the widespread use of unofficial or forged identity or protection papers among sailors made it difficult for the Royal Navy to tell Americans from non-Americans and led it to impress some Americans who had never been British. Some of these gained their freedom on appeal. American anger grew when British frigates were stationed just outside American harbours in view of American shores to search ships and impress men within the United States territorial waters. Well-publicized impressment actions outraged the American public such as the Leander affair and the Chesapeake-Leopard affair. The British public were outraged in their turn by the Little Belt affair in which a large American ship clashed with a small British sloop, resulting in the deaths of 11 British sailors. While both sides claimed that the other fired first, the British public in particular blamed the United States for attacking a smaller vessel, with calls in some newspapers for revenge. Americans were encouraged by their victory over the Royal Navy. The United States Navy also forcibly recruited British sailors, but the British government saw impressment as commonly accepted practice and preferred to rescue British sailors from American impressment on a case-by-case basis.

Conclusion (New Orleans, fight w/ Spanish, British opposition at home, war w/ Napoleon concluded, increasing blockade, Treaty of Ghent)

In early 1815, after a peace treaty had been signed, but before this news had reached the Americas, the United States defeated the British Army near New Orleans, Louisiana. Fighting also took place in West Florida, where a two-day battle for the city of Pensacola ended in Spanish surrender. In Britain, there was mounting opposition to wartime taxation and merchants lobbied for the resumption of trade with the United States. With the abdication of Napoleon, Britain's war with France ended and Britain stopped impressment generally. This made moot the issue of American sailor impressment and removed one of the original causes of the war. The British then increased the strength of their blockade of the United States coast which had a crippling effect on the American economy. Peace negotiations began in August 1814 and the Treaty of Ghent was signed on 24 December 1814. News of the peace finally reached the United States in February 1815, about the same time as news of the victory at New Orleans. The Americans triumphantly celebrated the restoration of their national honor, leading to the collapse of anti-war sentiment and the beginning of the Era of Good Feelings, a period of national unity. Both the restoration of honor and the "Second War of Independence" are important themes in American historiography and are considered important results by historians. The failure of the American invasion of British Canada advanced the evolving concept of Canadian identity and of Canada as a distinct region that would continue to evolve into a nation. The treaty was unanimously ratified by the United States Senate on 17 February 1815, ending the war with no boundary changes, except for the issue of some islands in Passamaquoddy Bay which were resolved after the war.

Origins (Chesapeake-Leopard affair, Little Belt affair)

The Chesapeake-Leopard affair was a naval engagement that occurred off the coast of Norfolk, Virginia, on Monday, June 22, 1807, between the British warship HMS Leopard and the American frigate USS Chesapeake. The crew of Leopard pursued, attacked, and boarded the American frigate, looking for deserters from the Royal Navy. Chesapeake was caught unprepared and after a short battle involving broadsides received from Leopard, the commander of Chesapeake, James Barron, surrendered his vessel to the British. Chesapeake had fired only one shot. The Chesapeake-Leopard affair created an uproar among Americans. There were strident calls for war with Great Britain, but these quickly subsided. President Thomas Jefferson initially attempted to use this widespread bellicosity to diplomatically threaten the British government into settling the matter. The United States Congress backed away from armed conflict when British envoys showed no contrition for the Chesapeake affair, delivering proclamations reaffirming impressment. Jefferson's political failure to coerce Great Britain led him toward economic warfare: the Embargo of 1807. The Little Belt affair was a naval battle on the night of 16 May 1811. It involved the United States frigate USS President and the British sixth-rate HMS Little Belt, a sloop-of-war, which had originally been the Danish ship Lillebælt, before being captured by the British in the 1807 Battle of Copenhagen. The encounter took place off the North Carolina coast. The Little Belt Affair was one of many incidents and events that led to the War of 1812. President had only one man injured. Little Belt suffered nine dead and 23 injured (two of them fatally). The sloop was also badly damaged in the encounter. The next morning, Lieutenant John Creighton went from President to Little Belt to lament the affair and offer Bingham space at any American port, which he declined. Bingham asked why President had attacked his much smaller ship. Creighton said it was because Little Belt had "provoked" the action. Bingham rejected the charge.

Origins (British support for Tecumseh)

The Northwest Territory consisted of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. It was the battleground for conflict between the United States and various tribes. The British Empire ceded the area to the United States in the Treaty of Paris in 1783, both sides ignoring the fact that the land was inhabited by various Native American peoples, including the Delaware, Fox, Kickapoo, Miami, Sauk, Shawnee, Winnebago and Wyandot people. Some warriors left their tribes to follow Tenskwatawa, a Shawnee prophet and the brother of Tecumseh. Tenskwatawa had a vision of purifying society by expelling the American settlers, referred to as the "children of the Evil Spirit". Tecumseh's Confederacy wanted to create its own state in the Northwest as it became clear that the Americans wanted all of the land in the Old Northwest for national growth. The British saw Tecumseh's Confederacy as a valuable ally and a buffer to their Canadian colonies, so they provided them with arms and ammunition. Subsequent attacks on American settlers in the Northwest further aggravated tensions between Britain and the United States. Raiding grew more common in 1810 and 1811. Westerners in the United States Congress found the raids intolerable and wanted them permanently ended. Additionally, Britain and the Native Americans had a long tradition of alliances against the United States, going back to the American Revolutionary War. British policy was divided. On the one hand, they wanted to encourage the raids to keep the Americans tied up fighting in the Northwest and also wanted to preserve a region that provided rich profits for Canadian fur traders. On the other hand, they feared that too much support for the tribes would cause a war with the United States. Tecumseh's plans for an indigenous state in the Northwest would have made British North America more defensible, but the defeats suffered by his Confederacy made the British wary of too much support for what was probably a losing cause. British diplomats attempted to defuse tensions on the frontier in the months preceding the war. According to the United States Army Center of Military History, the frontiersmen had no doubt that their troubles with the tribes "were the result of British intrigue" and many settlers began circulating stories of British Army muskets and equipment found on the field after raids. Thus, "the westerners were convinced that their problems could best be solved by forcing the British out of Canada". The British wanted to create a large Native American state to cover much of Indiana, Michigan and Ohio. They made the demand as late as the fall of 1814 at the peace conference, but they lost control of western Ontario in 1813 at key battles on and around Lake Erie. These battles destroyed Tecumseh's Confederacy which had been their main ally in that region, weakening their negotiating position. Much of the area remained under British or British-allied tribal control until the end of the war, but the British dropped the demands.

Long-Term Consequences in U.S. (Native American resistance, strong navy, Federalists, slaves, Creek Indians, Jackson invasion of Florida, Spain and Florida)

The United States repressed the Native American resistance on its western and southern borders. The nation also gained a psychological sense of complete independence as people celebrated their "second war of independence". Nationalism soared after the victory at the Battle of New Orleans. The opposition Federalist Party collapsed and the Era of Good Feelings ensued. No longer questioning the need for a strong Navy, the United States built three new 74-gun ships of the line and two new 44-gun frigates shortly after the end of the war. Another frigate had been destroyed to prevent its capture on the stocks. In 1816, the United States Congress passed into law an "Act for the gradual increase of the Navy" at a cost of $1,000,000 a year for eight years, authorizing nine ships of the line and 12 heavy frigates. The captains and commodores of the Navy became the heroes of their generation in the United States decorated plates and pitchers of Decatur, Hull, Bainbridge, Lawrence, Perry and Macdonough were made in Staffordshire, England, and found a ready market in the United States. Several war heroes used their fame to win election to national office. Andrew Jackson and William Henry Harrison both took advantage of their military successes to win the presidency while Richard Mentor Johnson used his wartime exploits to attain the vice presidency. During the war, New England states became increasingly frustrated over how the war was being conducted and how the conflict affected them. They complained that the United States government was not investing enough militarily and financially in the states' defenses and that the states should have more control over their militias. Increased taxes, the British blockade, and the occupation of some of New England by enemy forces also agitated public opinion in the states. At the Hartford Convention held between December 1814 and January 1815, Federalist delegates deprecated the war effort and sought more autonomy for the New England states. They did not call for secession but word of the angry anti-war resolutions appeared as peace was announced and the victory at New Orleans was known. The upshot was that the Federalists were permanently discredited and quickly disappeared as a major political force. This war enabled thousands of slaves to escape to freedom, despite the difficulties. The planters' complacency about slave contentment was shocked at the sight of their slaves fleeing, risking so much to be free. The British helped numerous Black Refugees resettle in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, where Black Loyalists had also been granted land after the American Revolutionary War. After the decisive defeat of the Creek Indians at the battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814, some Creek warriors escaped to join the Seminole in Florida, who had been forming as an ethnic group since the late 18th century. The remaining Creek chiefs signed away about half their lands, comprising 23,000,000 acres, covering much of southern Georgia and two thirds of modern Alabama. The Creek were separated from any future help from the Spanish in Florida and from the Choctaw and Chickasaw to the west. During the war the United States seized Mobile, Alabama which was a strategic location as it provided an oceanic outlet for export from the cotton lands to the north. Most were yet to be developed, but the United States control of this territory increased pressure on remaining Creek as European Americans began to migrate in number into the area. Jackson invaded Florida in 1818, demonstrating to Spain that it could no longer control that territory with a small force. Spain sold Florida to the United States in 1819 under the Adams-Onís Treaty following the First Seminole War. Pratt concludes that "[t]hus indirectly the War of 1812 brought about the acquisition of Florida. [...] To both the Northwest and the South, therefore, the War of 1812 brought substantial benefits. It broke the power of the Creek Confederacy and opened to settlement a great province of the future Cotton Kingdom".

Origins (American political conflict b/w Federalists & Democratic-Republicans)

The United States was in a period of significant political conflict between the Federalist Party (based mainly in the Northeast) and the Democratic-Republican Party (with its greatest power base in the South and West). The Federalists were criticized by the Democratic-Republicans for being too close to Britain while the Federalists countered that they were allied to France, a country headed by Napoleon, who was seen as a dictator. The Federalist Party favored a strong central government and closer ties to Britain while the Democratic-Republican Party favored a smaller central government, preservation of states' rights (including slavery), westward expansion and a stronger break with Britain. By 1812, the Federalist Party had weakened considerably and the Republicans were in a strong position, with James Madison completing his first term of office and control of Congress. Support for the American cause was weak in Federalist areas of the Northeast throughout the war as fewer men volunteered to serve and the banks avoided financing the war. The negativism of the Federalists ruined the party's reputation exemplified by the Hartford Convention of 1814-1815 and survived only in scattered areas. By 1815, there was broad support for the war from all parts of the country. This allowed the triumphant Democratic-Republicans to adopt some Federalist policies such as the national bank which Madison re-established in 1816.

Overview (stalemate, indigenous real losers, Napoleonic France & British naval blockade, impressments into Royal Navy, British arming of indigenous in frontier)

The War of 1812 was a conflict fought between the United States and its allies against the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and its own allies. It began when the United States declared war in June 1812 and ended in a stalemate when a peace treaty agreed earlier was ratified by the United States in February 1815. While the war ended in a draw, both sides were happy with the outcome that saw the war ending and indigenous nations are generally seen among historians as the real losers. Historians in Britain often see it as a minor theatre of the Napoleonic Wars while historians in Canada and the United States see it as a war in its own right. From the outbreak of war with Napoleonic France in 1803, Britain had enforced a naval blockade to choke off neutral trade to France which the United States contested as illegal under international law. To man the blockade, Britain pressed merchant sailors into the Royal Navy, including Americans. American sentiment grew increasingly hostile toward Britain due to incidents such as the Chesapeake-Leopard affair, five years before the war. The British were outraged by the 1811 Little Belt affair in which 11 British sailors died. Britain supplied arms to Native Americans who raided European-American settlers on the American frontier, hindering the expansion of the United States and provoking resentment. Although the debate on whether the desire to annex some or all of British North America (Canada) contributed to the American decision to go to war, the reasoning for invasion was mainly strategical. President James Madison signed into law the American declaration of war after heavy pressure from the War Hawks in the United States Congress.

Strategy (fighting Napoleon, defensive posture, Native American allies, attempts and failures in Upper & Lower Canada, Tecumseh's Confederacy)

With most of its army in Europe fighting Napoleon, Britain adopted a defensive strategy, with offensive operations initially limited to the border and the western frontier along with help from its Native American allies. Federalist opposition to the War of 1812 in the United States affected its prosecution, especially in New England, where it was referred to as "Mr. Madison's War". American defeats at the Siege of Detroit and the Battle of Queenston Heights thwarted attempts to seize Upper Canada, improving British morale. American attempts to invade Lower Canada and capture Montreal also failed. In 1813, the United States won the Battle of Lake Erie, gaining control of the lake and defeating Tecumseh's Confederacy at the Battle of the Thames, defeating Britain's largest Native American ally, a primary war goal. The Americans made a final attempt to invade Canada, but the Battle of Lundy's Lane during the summer of 1814 was fought to a draw. At sea, the powerful Royal Navy blockaded American ports, cutting off trade and allowing the British to raid the coast at will. In 1814, the British burned Washington, but the Americans later repulsed British attempts to invade New York and Maryland, ending invasions from Canada into the northern and mid-Atlantic states.